Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah, Here I am in Granada (Spain not Camp)

   Not that I’ve been to many pop-up restaurants (have I?) or other things cool people do, but even so I’m pretty sure Grain Store Unleashed ranks towards the top. First of all, they have an all-vegan menu available (if you ask for it). Second of all, they had the best water speed I’ve ever seen outside of American Chinese food restaurants. And most importantly, all the food was good, some very good, some great. 

    Grain Store Unleashed, housed in the main restaurant area of the Zetter Hotel, was the summer pop up of the King’s Cross restaurant Grain Store. The actual/long-term Grain Store is a supposedly vegetarian-friendly restaurant that really isn’t. Every time omnivores want to eat with me, they suggest Grain Store because it’s so veg-friendly. But I mean, come on. They have a few vegetarian options, and vegan stuff is marked — but the only vegan dishes are bread, gazpacho, and sides. No mains. There’s a note on the menu that says some dishes can be made vegan, but it doesn’t say which ones. Also, seriously, not even one already-vegan main? You do not make my list for places I will give money to if I have to do all the figuring out. 
    But luckily for everyone, they put on Grain Store Unleashed, a much more adventurous and much more accommodating type of dining. If they are smart and/or nice, the restaurant will decide to either do the Unleashed-style pop-up again, or, better yet, add the vegan dishes to their subpar menu. Because this vegan menu was great! 

    GSU (not to be confused with probably 10 colleges) was one of the nicest meals I’ve had in London, so it pretty much blows that it was short-term. It offered three different set menu options: 4 courses for $28.50, 6 for $34.50, or 8 for $39. (As always, I mean the local currency (pounds here) but I only have the dollah on my keyboard.) I would normally be like hells yeah, give me the 8, but after close inspection, I saw that you only got a vegetable tartlet (hehehe TARTLET) out of that, plus both desserts instead of  one. However, the second dessert was strawberries in Gran Marnier, which is like, first of all, I’m not going to pay you for fruit for dessert at a restaurant, thanks, but secondly, don’t ruin the fruit with alcohol. So 6 courses it was. You can also order a la carte but it didn’t make sense; 2-3 dishes and you’d be at the same cost so why would you do it!! Let’s look at all the food I ate!

    Oh, funnily enough (is it), they had an amazing drinks menu. Normally I am just a tap water person, but these drinks were so interesting that I had to get one. Hoorayfully, the non-alcoholic options were just as cool sounding as the booze. While my two companions got the lavender margarita and fig daisy (the latter just for the name, I think, sounds like a book character), I got a really great bergamot and apple iced tea, which was a low-key level of sweet (yay) and had a good tinge of bergamot and apple, even though I have no idea with the former tastes like. I do remember it being in The Body Shop toiletries from when I was like 11 but that’s the extent of it. I also have been saying it wrong my whole life, apparently, because I thought I was being smart and fancy by doing a long-o, no-t sound, but apparently the last syllable is pronounced like the apple juice company. Do not like. 
    So the food! They started us off with an avocado toast plate, compliments of the kitchen, which is pretty much the greatest way to start off any meal. Or any kind of event, really. Avocado toast? That you weren’t expecting? That is free? Yippee! Unfortunately, it wasn’t a 100% perfect experience, because you could tell the puree came from avocados that they bought in this country (England). You could taste that they were not yet ripe when they were cut, and also that they never would have ripened anyway. That’s what avocados here taste like. Blergh. Still, not great avocado toast is pretty good. 

Next was the ‘Vegetal oyster, potato waffle, and broccoli dip’. Intriguing! The ‘oyster’ play came from a cold green vegetable mixture on one of those thick white spoons that oysters are served on, topped with edible flowers. It was good I just have no idea what it is. The big brown piece of paper was actually the potato waffle, which was mashed potato dehydrated into a cracker. Pretty fun! The broccoli dip was delicious, like a mild broccoli-flavored hummus. I would have loved more of the broccoli dip instead of the unripe avocado opener. 

   Dish #2 was one of our favorites, because we love fried things. It was the courgette flower and tofu fritter, with tapenade dressing. It was like a plate of tempura, which no one is going to fight with. The huge block of soft tofu appeared at first to have a disagreeable ratio of fry-to-tofu, but it was really good. The long zucchini flower’s ratio was almost too far in the other direction, with such a delicate vegetable tempurafied. Regardless, both were great and came surrounded with a very necessary and very well-matched olive tapenade. w

  ‘Pickled heritage radish, beetroot and samphire, cauliflower cous cous’ was good but needed some work. I was super excited about samphire, which I’ve recently been introduced to. Given its natural saltiness, it makes sense to pair it with pickled stuff. But it needed something creamy and/or light paired with it. It was a beautiful dish, but altogether was just a little too salty or vinegary. Cauliflower couscous I believe is always a mistake – it’s just ground up raw cauliflower so people can act like they are eating a grain when they think grains are bad. It’s nonsense and it always tastes like nonsense. Here, it did nothing to offset the vinegariness, whereas an actual grain would have provided the necessary counterpart. 

   One of the most impressive parts of the meal was the ‘Wild mushroom tea’. I was hesitant about mushroom flavored tea, but quickly realized that that just means soup. More accurately, broth, and really unbelievably delicious broth. My friend who knows more about MSG that I do said it tasted like MSG (that’s a good thing), because mushrooms are high in glutamates or some such science and these were cooked (brewed) into tea (broth) properly. REALLY incredibly delicious for such a simple thing! 

   The final savory dish was our big fun main, ‘Artichoke stuffed with veggie chorizo and walnut, summer vegetables, rouille’. Rouille I learned is an olive oil-based garlic, saffron, and chili pepper sauce. This dish was really good, and it needed more of the rouille, not just because I know what it is now but because it was really great. I can always do without whole tomatoes given to me to bite into and 100% of the time burn my tongue because the insides were just cooked and are boiling, but at least they were good tomatoes. I loved the grilled lettuce, which people don’t do enough, and it was so nice to be given a huge artichoke heart with all the work already done of deleafing it. The chorizo was great too. Pretty excellent dish! 

    Finally, I’m so happy that I chose wisely with the dessert, because mine was soooo good. ‘Coconut and Kaffir lime tapioca with sweet potato’ sounds a little of my beaten path with desserts, but it was one of my favorite things ever. I never really had tapioca pudding before. It’s really good. The coconut and lime combo was mild and lovely, and the little hunks of sweet potato worked well and luckily weren’t candied or anything stupid like that. I want this all the time! 

   Grain Store Unleashed was such a fantastic meal! I hope they do something like this again. 

GRAIN STORE UNLEASHED AT THE ZETTER HOTEL 
Water speed: Really good for London!  
Service: Equally good and attentive. 
Bathrooms: Oh my the bathrooms. You had to go out sort of towards hotel reception but down a spiral staircase through a few rooms of really…interesting bars. You just spiraled downwards through business people’s conversations and were like don’t mind me just have to pee! Sooo weird. The bathroom door was very heavy. 
Food: Really nice overall and I’m so glad I got to go.  
Bonus: I learned about glutamates and tapioca. 

After our time in the city of Hangzhou, we left on a short train to Huangshan, one of China’s most important, and most spectacularly beautiful, sights. This is what’s known as the “Yellow Mountain”, and Chinese people will come from all over the country to climb up to the summit. It’s a strenuous climb, and there are a few route options to choose from – including via cable car, which is cheating!, we said, gung ho on doing a great day of hiking and climbing. Huangshan was the entry on our itinerary that I added myself. I had seen pictures of the mountain, and was in awe of how beautiful it was. I have to SEE the big f-ing thing, I said! I have to see this myself! Turns out, the universe had other ideas for me. I mean, I was there, I climbed up, oh how I climbed, but I didn’t actually see…anything. 

We’ll get there. First, we had to get to the town at the base of the mountain, Tangkou, where we were staying the first night. You either stay in Tunxi, by the station, or Tangkou, just under an hour away. Both are tiny, two street villages with a few questionable restaurants, a few shops, a few hostels, and some residents who look at you like, what the crap are you doing here. If you stay in Tunxi, you still have to take the bus to the base the day you climb the mountain, anyway, so there’s really no good reason not to stay in Tangkou. We stayed at a good place called YSHS Hostel, and it was fine – clean, basic, quiet – but what made it were the owners. Every review we read raved about “John and his mom” and we were like, whaaat is that about, but it’s true, John and his mom were the nicest people ever! His mom is the cook and doesn’t speak English but communicated her kindness successfully. She was very concerned when I didn’t have breakfast with Z one morning (I do room fruit for breakfast!). And John is great, and he will pick you up from and drive you to the various bus stations whenever you call him. So I definitely recommend staying there. They didn’t have a good laundry machine, so we did laundry just up the street at the other hostel, which was an interesting experience. The dryer was actually like a standing zipped up closet with an open bottom. Didn’t really work. 

We ‘explored’ the little town and got excited for the next day’s climb. It was foggy that first day but we crossed our fingers that we’d have better weather. Apparently it rains 200 days of the year on the mountain, but in the peak of summer, the storms usually move fast. So we were told. 

The next day, we set off early in the morning with John driving us to the bus station for the quick bus to the entrance of the mountain. This is where everyone needs to buy tickets to enter the mountain, which cost over 200 yuan. This is where 99% of people get on the cable car so they can get to the summit in one piece. And this is where Z and I spent 20 minutes asking everyone who worked there how in god’s name we find the actual climbing path. There were zero signs for people attempting to actually climb up. It was infuriating, and stupid. This is a big deal to climb! But that day we were the only people there at that time wanting to climb. That should have tipped us off that maybe it wasn’t a good day – the fog had worsened – but because of our schedule, it was our only shot anyway. 

Also, I didn’t yet mention, there are two climbing paths up the mountain – the eastern and western steps. The eastern steps are 7.5 kilometers of mostly easier, flatter, more doable steps and terrain. It’s still obviously a lot, but it’s better for the average person. The western steps are harder, to say the least, and our guide book firmly dissuades the reader from attempting to go up them. It was 15 kilometers of killer steep uphill mountain stairs. 15 kilometers. That is like 10 miles. Uphill. I tried a stairmaster once and lasted like a minute. We were not doing the western steps. 

John had other ideas, though. We said, John my boy! drive us to the entrance for the eastern steps! And he said – NO! You don’t want to do that, the scenery is nothing it’s a waste it’s terrible! The western steps are what’s actually worth seeing! And despite being TOLD (by the book) that it was super insane to do, we were like, Okay John! Take us to the 15 kilometers of steep mountain stairs! We will be fine! 

We were not fine – and it didn’t even have to do with how hard it was. 

So to start this hike of insanity when no one who worked there could point to a freaking path beginning, we followed buses that were going a little bit farther up the road, which was super freaking scary and dangerous – this was a mountain path road, meaning it was winding and narrow and buses careen around the bends without expecting to see people walking. It was scary and dumb but it was literally the only way to start the climb, apparently. What the hell! I can’t get over this, considering how big an attraction this climb is. Where were the starting signs, Huangshan! Get your shit together! 

Luckily, we made it to a spot that finally clearly signalled for pedestrians to ‘turn into the woods here’, and we began the real path finally. It was chilly and very foggy, but we hoped for a change in the weather soon. And we got one, just not in the direction we wanted. Oh no, the weather got much, much worse. First, it started to rain. We had our anoraks and umbrellas so we didn’t worry about that. It’s just rain! On slippery mountain steps. No biggie. And it was getting colder and colder, which, well, at least it wasn’t sweltering hot, right? But for now, we concentrated on climbing endless stairs. Hooray for exercise! This will be great! I’ll feel so great after all this leg work! 

After what seemed like hours, we assumed we’d made great progress. We came to one of the first titled points, the location of an old temple or pagoda long ago or something, and looked at the map (really really shitty map, all of them are, and they are all different) and realized we had gone like one kilometer tops. We’d gone nowhere. We met a group of Parisians who were like, surely this is halfway, right? We told them the bad news and they were like aaaare you joking?? This is TERRIBLE! It was great to be with people who were complaining more than me. I was okay so far, just a little cold and wet, but I still was optimistic that the fog and clouds would break before we got out of the forest and to a point on the mountain where views would be good. 

Over the next two hours, it didn’t just get colder and rainier. It was like the coldest and wettest we’ve ever been for that long. We were soaked to the bone, our clothes so wet we could wring out our shirts despite wearing anoraks, and so frozen that they were like sheets of ice hitting our shivering skin. Every step we took, it was like swinging into a sheet of ice. Clammy, goose-bumped skin, completely drenched hair and clothes, and SOCKS, despite good hiking boots (and hiking socks! it went through to my base layer socks! so gross!). It was completely miserable, and so were we. But we were going to stay at a nice hotel at the top of the mountain that night, as is like the thing to do, so we kept plowing ahead, despite the worsening weather. The rain got harder, but it was the wind that was killer. It was like hurricane wind, gale force winds knocking us back – which, when you are on top of mountain cliffs, is not an ideal situation. People were hanging onto the slippery ‘railings’ from the 4th century trying to make it to the next plateau for safety but the wind thwarted us at every turn. Then the wind blew my umbrella inside out – which it had been doing repeatedly, and as usual I would turn it the other way and let the wind blow it rightside in or however you say that. But this time, the wind was so ferocious that it blew my umbrella inside out and BROKE the spokes. No more umbrella usage for me! So I used my soaking wet buff to keep my anorak hood in place and settled for that being as good as I could get, as rain just poured right down into my eyes and made it harder to see now. We made it to another little overhang section with another little shop (luckily there were drink and snack stands frequently), and dozens and dozens of people were camped out, waiting for the weather to lift but we all knew by now that it would only get worse. And it did. It really did, but we continued because we had to be almost there, right? 

It started to hail, guys. We were probably 10 kilometers up the mountain by now – UP A MOUNTAIN, on a swirling path by the edge of it – and it was HAILING. And gale force winds were whipping our entire bodies hither and thither and, according to the people coming down the mountain, we still were at least an hour from the end of the Western Steps. Another hour, after it had been probably three and a half by now of consistent trudging directly UP. We were a mess. The French guys were even worse. We all huddled together under a small roof and scarfed down a few necessary blood-sugar-raising snacks. I have never been a huge fan of Pringles, but the entire can we demolished was the greatest thing I’d ever eaten in my life. 

The worst part, though, wasn’t how miserable the weather was making us. It was how miserable the weather was making the view. Or, rather, there was no view anymore. We had come to Huangshan, I NEEDED to see Huangshan, because the view from and of the mountain is considered one of the most magical sights in all of China, a must-see, just beyond comprehension how gorgeous it is. And we could barely see three feet in front of us, let alone anything in the thousands of feet below us. It was like we were just standing in the clouds, and there was no seeing anything outside of the clouds. It’s a real shame that we couldn’t enjoy the whole point of this experience and destination, merely because of bad luck and timing. 

​We continued. One more hour, we said. We can do this. One more hour and we can relax in our overpriced but should-be-decent hotel (all the hotels up at the mountain were overpriced for what they were because they can be, but still, hotels), we can take a warm shower and put on dry clothes. And maybe tomorrow would be better, and we could wake up for sunrise over the vista. So we trudged. One foot in front of the other. We were literally willing our feet to take each step. 

At about the 4.5 hour mark, we finally, finally finished the 15 kilometers uphill and reached the end of the Western Steps! We were so disappointed that we couldn’t see any of the famous views, but at least we finished the climb! We made it. Ugh, finally. So now to our hotel! Immediately at the top of the Western Steps is a different hotel, a restaurant, toilets (thanks! although there were enough along the way, thankfully), and the path to this end of the cable car. (Yes, those wise people we saw at the ticket entrance who just hopped in the cable car missed the whole dire experience of climbing in freezing hail and got off here.) We said goodbye to the French people as they happily praised the cable car they’ve been waiting to take back down and get the hell off this mountain. We asked people in the hotel and the restaurant how to get to the Paiyunlou (spelling wrong I’m sure) Hotel and they showed us a vague route on our maps that continued trekking down and around various parts of the mountain… for another 4.5 hours. UM EXCUSE ME WHAT? WHAT IS THAT YOU SAID? We kept asking different people and they all said somewhere between 4 and 5 hours, so it was real. This nightmare was real. We did not have another 2 hours in us, let alone 4-5! We called the hotel to find out whether this was a) for real, and b) why there was no information anywhere saying that this hotel was located like NOT where anyone says it is (including the book! It was f-ing recommended by our book which made NO mention of it being anywhere other than at the top of this part of the climb! DAMMIT TO HELL.) But the person who answered the phone did not speak English, and after saying a few words in Chinese she hung up on us. That’s after someone finally , finally, picked up the phone, so continuing to call wasn’t really an option and apparently despite saying that they spoke English, they did not, so what good would it do. We asked one more person the route and got another 4.5 hour answer. And then, for the first time in our lives, we bailed on a hotel booking and called John and asked if we could stay again at YSHS if we came back down. He said of course, because he’s the nicest, and that he would pick us up where he dropped us that morning, so many hours that felt like days ago, so we got on the cable car, tried to thaw during the INSANE 20-minute ride (longest cable car of my entire life, jfc) during which we continued to see absolutely zilch outside, and reassured each other that we had made the right decision. It was a sucky choice to have to make, but we could not have gone through another entire round of what we had already gone through in the wind and rain, just for the chance of better weather in the morning, when we could save four hours of hiking and shower and relax at YSHS and enjoy Tangkou a little more. I think we made the right decision. 

At the base, we got on the short bus back to the bus station, and John picked us up a minute later and drove us back to safety. And warmth. Thawing out in that shower was the best ever. We unpacked our day packs that we had on the mountain with us (John had been storing our big bags till our intended return the next day, so that was nice and lucky) and saw that every single last item was soaked through. I had to throw out a whole notebook that I had buried in the bottom, along with a box’s worth of tissues, both of which had turned to Gwynnie’s website mush. Our clothes for the next day were so wet we could wring them, and our passports were soaked! We had to dry them out and then place them under furniture to re-form and flatten. Thank god they weren’t actually ruined, just wet and misshapen. But the worst, the saddest for me, was my last pack of my favorite gum all the way from the USA, now a disintegrating box of wet gunk. (I kept it for a week after this, hoping it would dry out and get back to an edible consistency. It did not.) 

After we took boiling hot showers (we thought about going back to the hostel up the street and asking to stand in that standing-closet clothes dryer but that would have required going back outside), we went into the very nice common lobby area and chatted with a French father and son while I think John’s son played video games. John brought us all tea and crackers on the house, which was really sweet of him. The French guys lived in Paris, so we talked about how much we love (and miss…oh so miss) Paris, and all about their travels (Indonesia! Fun!) and ours, and it came out that we had our honeymoon (three years ago!) in Morocco, and the father got super excited and exclaimed “I am Moroccan!” We went through the details of our Moroccan trekking trip, as much as we could remember of the little Berber villages in the mountains that we stayed in, and of all the places in the world, it turned out that he was from Imlil, one of those tiny villages we had trekked to and lodged in, in the Atlas Mountains! How amazing is that! That these people we were having tea with in like the smallest little village in China happened to be from the smallest little place in Morocco that we went to. Such a small world! 

Soon, we needed food. Those magical Pringles were indeed wonderful but not enough to refuel after this day, so we set off to find some weird looking restaurants with pictures of food we could point to. Luckily, such places were plentiful, both in terms of the pointing and the weird, so we were in luck. I pointed to several vegetables and got them, and we liked it, and we loved it. 

After proper sustenance, we went off to find my favorite things that I had discovered in these little streets the previous day – my two favorite things in China, bubble tea and steamed buns. Yesirree, this tiny little town had BOTH, and great versions of them too! Can you even! The off-brand bubble tea place was called Tea & Brown, and it was so cheap and pretty decent. I mean as long as I can successfully communicate that I want the bubbles in mine, we’re good, I don’t care if you just give me a cup of water as long as there’s bubbles. One time the lady didn’t give me bubbles (often they don’t come in the fruit teas, and I guess I didn’t say the words for ‘please give me bubles’ right) and she tried to get away with it! Hell no! I (very politely and sweetly) made her open the plasticked top part and pour bubbles on top. 

Even better was the random lady cooking up tons (tonnes!) of steamed buns near a garage on what we considered the main street. I don’t even know if they were really for sale to the general public, but that first day I asked whether they were ‘su shi’ – vegetarian – and she pointed to the veggie ones, I said yayyy gimme, she said 1.5 yuan each (like 22 cents), and then every day after I bought like 4 at a time for less than $1 altogether! I can’t even eat four in a day but I couldn’t buy fewer; they were so cheap and big and great! It was SUCH a find! Not even in Shanghai did I find amazing vegetarian steamed buns like this! And so cheap! Because they were 1.5 yuan, I referred to them as the “one dollar five buns” (and one time, just to finish the thought, we bought SIX!). My family will understand this, and okay I’ll explain – it’s just referring to a video of my cousin when she first looooose a tooth and said the tooth fairy gave her ‘1 dollar 5’ and somehow it is THE FUNNIEST THING EVER. Anyway, the 1 dollar 5 steamed buns were so good, and so convenient, and so easy to get, I wish every town in China had a lady like this. What a great lady. 

​We also had fun exploring the small shops in town for goodies we might want…or not. 

So, we made the best of our extra time in Tangkou, but it really is such a disappointment to have missed out on the full experience of Huangshan. It’s supposed to be so magical and, for many, life-changing to see the majestic sweep of the misty mountains as you climb up and up and up, so to be met instead with pure dense cloud cover was such a damn shame. The only slight silver lining, if you can call it that, is that the next day was gross and foggy too, so if we (somehow) had made it to our hotel and tried for the views the next morning, we still would not have seen anything good. So that’s good, I guess! It means we made the right decision coming down the mountain; we just unwittingly picked the wrong week to visit Huangshan (and the wrong hotel regardless! Who builds a hotel almost 9 hours of trekking away and doesn’t say anything about the second half of it?! and I’m still so mad at the book for including all this info about it and not saying p.s. it’s not located where it says on our map! grrr). It’s too sad to share pictures of what it actually looks like here (and, well, obviously I didn’t take any myself), so take a quick second to google ‘Huangshan yellow mountain’ and take a look, and then you’ll see why we added this stop to our agenda, and why we’re pretty mad at our crappy luck. And then comment below OH DAMN IT’S BEAUTIFUL SO SORRY FOR YOU. I knowwww.